
276: ‘Bring It On, Haters’ With Ben Thompson
The Talk Show With John Gruber
01/31/20
•167m
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Special guest Ben Thompson returns to the show to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the iPad.
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Links:
- DF: “The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10”.
- Ben: “The Tragic iPad”.
- Tweetie for iPad: Loren Brichter’s iPad masterpiece from 2010.
- Ben in 2013: “What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong”.
- Average times to brute-force crack iOS device passcodes.
- The feds got Paul Manafort’s encrypted WhatsApp texts from his iCloud backup.
- Ben’s and my favorite iPad drawing app: The Iconfactory’s Linea.
- Obsessive Astros fan upset by scandal logged 8,200 pitches from 2017.
- Randy Johnson tipped his pitches his entire career.
- Randy Johnson faces John Kruk in the 1993 All-Star game and Kruk wants nothing to do with him.
- Kobe scores 62 in 3 quarters in 2005.
- Kobe scores 81 in 2006.
- Kobe scores 60 in his final game in 2016.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Previous Episode

275: ‘Fake Faces’ With Glenn Fleishman
January 23, 2020
•180m
Special guest Glenn Fleishman returns to the show. Topics include iPhone encryption, the privacy implications of widely-available reverse image search for faces, deep-learning-powered algorithmically-generated faces, and Jeopardy’s “Greatest of All Time” tournament.
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Links:
This is Jeopardy:
- Jeopardy’s Greatest of All Time Tournament.
- Glenn’s analysis of matches 1–3 for Motherboard.
- Glenn’s archive of articles regarding Jeopardy.
- Prisoner of Trebekistan, by Bob Harris.
- Ken Jennings’s excellent Twitter account.
iPhone encryption:
- Jack Nicas’s New York Times column on how iPhone encryption works.
- My link to Nicas’s column, with a few additional thoughts.
Algorithmically-generated faces:
- The Washington Post: “Dating Apps Need Women. Advertisers Need Diversity. AI Companies Offer a Solution: Fake People”.
- Glenn on deep fake faces, last year for Fast Company .
- Facebook removes profiles with fake pics.
Facial recognition search:
- Kashmir Hill’s stunning report for The Times on Clearview AI, a Peter-Thiel-backed company that supplies law enforcement with facial recognition search, built using a library of billions of photos uploaded to the web.
- Nelson Minar on Yandex’s reverse image search for faces, which is startlingly accurate, and available to anyone.
- Screenshot of Yandex search results for my own face.
Miscellaneous:
- Tiny Type Museum.
- Election Ride Home podcast.
- The intense concentration required by grandmaster-level chess burns thousands of calories per day.
- YubiKey 5Ci — 2FA dongle with Lightning and USB-C jacks ($70 though).
- Loyola Maramount’s 1990 high-scoring men’s basketball team.
- Have I Been Pwned? — Fantastic resource where you can search to see if you have an account that was compromised in a data breach. Spoiler: you probably do.
- Kashmir Hill, writing for Gizmodo last year: “I Cut the ‘Big Five’ Tech Giants From My Life. It Was Hell”.
- The New York Times: “One Nation, Tracked”.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Next Episode

277: ‘Polish Stink Eye’ With John Moltz
February 24, 2020
•163m
Special guest John Moltz returns to the show. Topics include Larry Tesler and his “no modes” mantra for UI design, the state of malware on the Mac, third-party default apps on iOS, Apple and the coronavirus outbreak, and a record number of tips and tricks.
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Links:
- Larry Tesler:
- Malwarebytes’s “State of Mac Malware in 2020” report:
- Mark Gurman claims Apple is considering third-party default apps for iOS 14.
- How to enable the startup chime on new Mac hardware.
- On Apple’s attempts to stiff retail employees for time spent waiting in bag-check lines.
- The Keychron K2 mechanical Bluetooth keyboard Jason Snell convinced me to buy. (I got brown switches.)
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
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